Pieces
by amberpire
Summary: You stay as motionless as you can and watch her with your blood on her hands and you wonder what that means, symbolically. ;Jade/Cat;


**AN: **So, this story morphed into something I didn't really plan. Like always when I'm testing a new pairing, I experiment, and that's what this is, really. It was fun to write, though. It's a short oneshot for me, and I don't know, depending on how you see you Jade, she could be a bit OOC. She isn't to me, but everyone views her differently.

**Warning: **Self-harm.

* * *

Here she is, picking up the pieces for you. Again.

She's crying. At first, the sight of that really hurt you because Cat's the one person you never wanted to hurt, but you're numb to the image now. She cries a lot when she's with you and you wonder why. You wonder why she puts up with this all the time, why she rescues you over and over when you tell her you don't want to be saved. You tell her to give up but she never listens. Because you always call eventually, you call because you get too scared to do it alone anymore and you call because you know that she'll make it better and she always comes. Always.

You watch her dump shards of glass into the bathroom trashcan. Her fingers have blood on them. Your blood. And she slices herself more than once on the glass as she throws it away but she doesn't wince, not once. She sniffles and she's not looking at you and you know why - because she hates seeing you like this. She hates when you let your anger out this way. She hates when you call after and not before. She wants to help you, she wants you to get the kind of help she can't give you, but you can't help but think there are just some things that can't be helped and maybe you're one of those things that can't be fixed.

And you just sit there and watch her wipe the blood from the linoleum floor. You're afraid to move, particularly your legs, because during the actual - what? Ritual? - it feels good, great, even, but once it's done and the endorphins are gone, it just really fucking hurts. So you stay as motionless as you can and watch her with your blood on her hands and you wonder what that means, symbolically.

Because you weren't always like this. You weren't always broken and incapable, you weren't always angry. You remember well the days you weren't, when you nearly as bubbly as Cat, as impossible as that seems. You close your eyes and try to grasp that kind of carelessness again, that hope and wonder - but you can't even remember how to make yourself feel those things and you can't even remember why someone would even _want _to feel those things. You just woke up and forgot one day. So you spent weeks and months trying to remember good things but everything that's bad crept on you like a big fucking shadow and swallowed everything up. And in a desperate attempt to remember you took your dad's pocket knife and pricked the skin of your inner thigh; easy to hide with just a slip of your jeans and you didn't have to look at them if you closed your legs in the shower and pretended they weren't there. Your plan had been to never cut deep enough to scar, but soon nips and tiny slices weren't doing it for you. And you went deeper and harder and made the gashes wider and longer just because you could, just because you wanted to feel something. Anything.

Cat touches your knee and your eyes fly open, narrowing in on her. She's stopped crying, kind of, and her hair is tumbling down her shoulders in thick ruby waves and even with sadness and guilt and fear dominating her features, she's beautiful. She has medical supplies of all kinds in both of her hands. Neither of you say a word. You just open your legs and let her slide into them. And it stings and it burns but you only grit your teeth and tilt your head against the edge of the bathtub and you let her take care of you, you let her pick up the pieces because you either won't or you can't. Even if you could, you probably wouldn't, because why fix something if you're never going to use it?

You'd never admit out loud how weak you are and you're glad Cat doesn't point it out. She's always been careful about this, this picking up the pieces for you because you're too afraid of what it will look like when it's all put together again, and she never asks why you do this. Never. Not once. And you'd think that after the fifth or sixth time of stumbling in on a girl who is bleeding so profusely she can barely walk you'd start to wonder why, but Cat's the kind of person who understands you to know that if you wanted her know these things, you would tell her and there's a reason why you don't. She never asks, she just takes care of you until she feels like you can be alone again. She helps you stand and walks you out of the bathroom, past the medicine cabinet mirror that you smashed on the side of the sink and back into your bedroom. The house is quiet and your room is dark and here you feel scarless. It's a nice feeling.

Cat sets you on your bed and you tentatively lay on your back, legs slightly parted. You're in just your t-shirt and your underwear and even though there are bandages on both of your inner thighs, it still hurts and you don't want them to touch. Cat curls next to you, her cheek on you shoulder, and the two of you sit in silence for a long time. You wonder what she's thinking. You wonder how she can handle all this shit from you, all of this self-harm. You wonder how she can come and save you at any time of night, regardless of what she's doing. You wonder why she tells you she loves you.

That's not _normal_. That's not _fair_. Why does she have to love you? Why does someone so perfect have to love someone so broken? And why can't you be better for her? Why can't you take all that anger inside of you and push it away? Why can't you put the knife away and call her for something normal, like taking her on a date or something? Cutting yourself and then calling her to take care of you is hardly romantic, hardly fair for someone like Cat.

It's a terrible cycle. You're afraid to feel, so you slice your skin to feel something else but that's even scarier, and then Cat picks you up and dusts you off and you're afraid of what _she _makes you feel so you start all over. And it never stops and there's a part of you that doesn't want it to stop, you just want some kind of consistency even if it's broken and not good for you because at least it's familiar and something you know.

"This -"

Her voice startles you so much you jump, wincing at the pain that spreads like fire up and down your thighs. You turn your eyes to her and through the dark you can see her big, brown eyes searching for yours. You're surprised to hear her voice because there's almost a commanding tone to it, a force that scares you. You'd do anything for her. You'd do anything she asked.

"This has to stop."

Except maybe that.

You flick your eyes away because you can't stand the hurt in her eyes. Why is she even hurting? She didn't do anything to you. You're just stupid and you can't control what little emotions you have. They just explode out of you and ask for blood and you give it to them because they scare you. And you tell people you're fearless and then you go home and slice your thighs until they're nothing but scarred masses of flesh. You're not the person you tell people you are, you're not the confident, brave, straight-forward Jade everyone knows. You're just this dark person that no one really understands, not even Cat, not even you, and the fact that you don't know why you do these things really scares you. Not knowing why is scarier than knowing that you do it in the first place.

And Cat's asking - _telling _you to stop and behind those words are a thousand others that she isn't speaking. Words she's either too scared to say or can't find the way to put them together without hurting you. Maybe she thinks you're fragile; it isn't that far of a stretch, obviously. Because a girl could call you the ugliest person on the planet and you wouldn't feel a thing, but casting your eyes across the table at your bright, smiling mother or watching the sun dip and sink behind the trembling horizon proves too much for you and you take it out on your weak, screaming thighs. It isn't fair how the questions of someone who's dying plague you, how you can't stop thinking about where the point in everything is. Cat's always been the bandage you've needed, the stitches that hold you together for a while before they split and become something else. You're always becoming something else. But Cat brings you some kind of comfort. Because she's the kind of brightness you never understood, the kind of happy you used to have. And she holds your hands in hers like there's nothing wrong with them, like they haven't been breaking mirrors or slicing your flesh or curling into fists when those thoughts make your mind a dark place to be. She holds them like they're innocent, like they've done no wrong. Cat holds them when no one else will take them. She doesn't take your hands because you offer them, she takes them because she thinks they're beautiful.

"Jade?"

Cat kisses you too, sometimes. She did the first time you called. She stumbled in, panicking, and saw the blood and you were crying then because it was scary, letting someone see you without all of your walls up, and she just fell to her knees and kissed you like it was the only thing she could do to save you. At first you were thinking, 'what the hell', but then it felt kind of nice, because Beck had kissed you a million times before that but it had never felt like _that_. It had never felt like Beck actually enjoyed it or that he was doing it for any other reason than he felt like he had to. And that's why you drifted and that's why you both went different directions because you didn't know what you wanted and Beck was tired of your indecision. But Cat, she kisses you. She kisses you like she means it, like she wants to. And not just to fix you. It's not like she's trying to be something she isn't. She just loves you in the most simple of ways. And her gender never mattered, none of that bullshit mattered - she's just a person, a really nice person, who cares about you and wants to help you when everyone else was afraid you'd whip back at them.

Cat's kisses are more than just two faces touching, more than just lips mashing against another pair. There's always been some feeling you don't understand and scares you behind it, around it, inside of it. Inside of you. And she doesn't just kiss you when you're broken - she kisses you when you're healing, when you're laughing, when the two of you are at a restaurant, talking about silly things that make both of you smile. She just kisses you. She touches your chin and your hair and she kisses you. Her lips tell you the things her voice can't.

She kisses your scars. When you're not broken, when she's gotten you to a point that she can touch you and hold you and forget that you crumble every once in a while, she splits your legs and kisses every single one of them. It makes you cry. It makes you shiver and cry. Because they're not ugly to her, they're just wounds from a battle, a war, that you're fighting and she knows that she can't help you, that it's something you have to ask for. She kisses your scars and she lifts you into a cloud of pleasure that might even be better than when that knife curls over your leg. And it's more than sex, then. Because there are your scars, right there, staring her in the face, and she kisses them. She kisses them and you moan her name.

You're pulled out your thoughts when Cat's face hovers over yours, brown eyes prying through the darkness and begging, pleading for you to tell her you will stop when you're not sure if you can or if you want to. Because when you're doing it, when you're slicing the skin inside your thighs, it's a spark, it's comprehension and movement. You're both afraid of it and intrigued and that seems to be every human's downfall. Deadly curiosity. But you want it, you want and need it to function because you can't stand the what-ifs, the maybes, the what-happens-after-this. You're just trying to find something to feel that isn't scary. You don't want to be scared anymore.

"Jade, please." Her hand flutters to your cheek and you just stare at her, stare at this person, this girl, that has loved you at your worst and maybe, maybe she's something you don't have to be afraid of. Something can't be so scary if you know there will always be someone to pick up the pieces. She will be that person for you as long as you call.

You reach up, tangle your hands in her ruby hair, and pull her down so you can kiss her and hear - _feel _all of those things she can't say.


End file.
